Neil from Messick's here today to talk to you about this mower that I saw on Facebook Marketplace the other day. This mower should not exist. We're going to talk today a little bit about the design of this mower, maybe why it's being offered up for sale in a place like Facebook. There's a lot of interesting market dynamics out there today that cause this thing to even show up. We're going to talk a little bit about some of its intricacies and why putting it on the front of your tractor is a terrible idea.
So what are we looking at here? What you see in this photo is a 72-inch finish mower. Now 72-inch finish mowers are quite common. We sell them on tractors to go into your three-point hitch all the time, but you notice that this one is attached on to a front loader with a hydraulic motor on there to take power off of your tractor's third function and operate that mower. This is a bad idea for a number of different reasons but I can understand why this is being offered today. You have a Chinese imported to implement here.
A lot of things are being brought over from overseas into our market here. You're going to find a lot of these things offered on places like Facebook Marketplace or your Amazon, eBay, those kinds of online marketplaces. There is an appeal for a mower like this, because of all the front hydraulics that we install on machines today. There is a lot of interest in putting many, many kinds of implements out on that loader, be it things like snow blowers or mowers, you name it. Everybody wants to put it on their loaders, because of the ease of installing it, being able to drive into it with your skid steer coupler and lock it into place to transfer that power just by plugging in those hoses. It is though not a great idea.
Your tractor is a tool carrier and there's a number of different places on your machine that you can use your tool carrier to power some kind of attachment. The most common of those is going to be your three-point hitch with the PTO coming out the back. Your tractor has a specification for PTO horsepower and that tells you how many horsepower from your engine can make it out the back of your tractor. The best machines are going to have PTO horsepower that's only about 10% less than what your engine horsepower is. Some with transmissions that may not be quite as refined sometime will lose about 20% or so between that engine and the rear of the machine. But by and large, a majority of your horsepower is going to make it out the back in order to go into whatever implement that you have out there.
In the case of this mower though, it's not being run with the tractor's PTO. It's being shown run off of tractor hydraulics. Off of that third function where we have hydraulic flow running out that front loader into order to operate another implement. The horsepower calculation here gets a little interesting. We're delivering power now through that fluid. You have the engine under your hood that's turning a hydraulic pump that's pumping that fluid throughout your tractor's hydraulic system, ultimately going through some valving and piping and ending up going out that front loader. A tractor the size that is intended for a 72-inch finish mower, you usually are going to have somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 to 10 gallons a minute of hydraulic fluid coming out that front loader.
Now, here's a little bit of math. We're going to go here and figure out exactly how much of that power we're able to deliver out to that mower. There's some constants here. If you go through when you figure the GPM that's flowing through the hydraulic system, multiply it by the pressure, divide it by a constant, we can go out and figure out how many gallons per minute equates into engine horsepower. A typical small tractor at just over six gallons a minute of hydraulic flow, specifically this is coming off a Kubota's Standard L series, is going to deliver 8.8 horsepower out those front couplers.
If you took another machine that might be a little bit larger, say you got something a little bit bigger, a little bit more flow, even getting up into the 10-gallon a minute range is only going to put out 14 horsepower. Now we're talking here tractors that are generally in the high 20s to nearly 40 horsepower in order to power this thing. They're going to be putting the better part of say 20 to 35 horsepower out that PTO. By putting it on the front of the loader and powering it this way, you're going to have about a third to optimistically a half of the amount of power running that mower than if you chose to put it on the back of your tractor.
What kind of equipment could reasonably run this mower? Well, there is quite a lot of equipment out there actually that does a lot of work with hydraulic motors in this way, of delivering that fluid and using it to create motion. We're doing it with a lot bigger hydraulic pumps and a lot higher pressures with a lot more flow than what you're usually going to find on a small tractor like what is pictured here. A machine like this track loader, we're talking a minimum high 20s gallons per minute up into the 40s when we get up in the larger machines with high flow. With that kind of flow, we're delivering a lot more horsepower out to those implements.
Yes, you could pin this mower onto the front of a skid steer or truck loader, probably power and get away with it but look at this machine. You're going to rip the ever-living daylights out of whatever it is that you're out trying to mow. The only machine that I could picture that actually would be appropriate for this mower would be something like Bobcat's Toolcat. This expensive machine does have lighter weight, drivable tires, and enough hydraulic flow in order to be able to power an implement like that. It's an extremely unusual machine. Outside of that one specific unit, I would say anybody making a purchase of a mower like this is buying something that almost has no usable application.
One of the fascinating things about working in this industry is the sheer variety of equipment, and attachments, and applications that people have. We are always learning. We're always kind of discovering new ways in order to get different things done, but with that huge variety of what's out there, putting together the wrong combination of things can have disastrous results.
We’ve got a great staff of salespeople here at Messick's that are glad to talk you through that process. We've got yards full of equipment and attachments out here to be able to help you get things done more quickly. If you're shopping for a piece of equipment and we can help, or if you have parts of service needs for a machine you've already got, please call Messick's. We're available at 800-222-3373 or online at Messick's.com.
